et al
by Static Lull
Summary: o4. PercyPenelope —- it's not as poetic as it used to be. A contest collection —- Alice, Sirius, RemusCharity, PercyPenelope.
1. though they are very flat

**a / n ; **written for challenge two (because I am an idiot and didn't submit my entry for challenge one on time) of the forum-wide competion over at the HPFC forum. I am representing **slytherin house **and my characters are **alice longbottom **and **bellatrix lestrange**. I just thought I'd go ahead and mention (before I get a million reviews about how erratic this is) that the rambling, run-ons, and general degeneration of this piece was entirely intentional (though, feel free, judges to dock points, if you must, in your evaluation. I completely understand), and that anything recognizable either belongs to JK Rowling or Lewis Carroll._ Really_, I had so much fun writing this, it almost doesn't matter that I'll get a horrid score. ;)

**et al**  
_because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat_

: - :

You can't temember if the walls have ever been a different shade of green, though you think they must have been because this green is too docile and doe-like, too much like falling into the world, and certainly nothing like the acid you don't recall _(but think you almost remember in a sort of cellular sense)_ or the serpentine constellation that spilt its glare across the walls of your foyer like a ghastly gas lamp one November.

You can't remember if you've ever even had a foyer, because here there's just beds and bowls and bookshelves and begonias and green, floral wallpaper, all pressed together in one room, but you think you must have or maybe they've just misplaced it in all this crammed-togetherness, but this non-memory you keep sheltered in your split ends and tucked away in bedside drawers you won't unclose doesn't sit well without one.

And you try not to think about it - - what's locked in drawers or the philosophical question of foyers _(because they're tied together like daisy chains and connected like cat's cradle, and thinking of one makes you remember the other or the other three and the one that looks like the black queen, that's a little guant and likened to the Grim Reaper from the side, especially)_ - - you try to think of cheerful things - - bright gum wrappers kept folded in your lap; the round face of a boy, smiling; the warm weight of a man's hand in your own. You try to fix them in your mind, hold them there, invite them round for tea. Grass swaying. Slices of oranges arranged neatly on a saucer. Daisy chains.

_(no!)_

Dark things filter in instead, slip through the cracks in the doorways, seep from shadows along the walls - - plates thick with dust; enameled smiles that catch skin and candlelight between their teeth, swallow them whole; the broken-glass angle of a raven's beak as it opens wide.

_('why _is_ a raven like a writing desk?')_

You wake up sometimes with a voice in your ears that sounds like birds cawing and drawers being snapped shut _(which might also be the sound of your bones breaking or your nerves screaming or your own voice gone red, you can't often distinguish), _with the black queen at your bedside with a smile like a guillotine and shadows in her cheekbones and a sliver of wood in her hand.

On her lips is a question like the riddles from your nightmares and the pages of children's picture books emptied out.

And it's not quite the right question, the one you think you hear, but it's close in answer if not phrasing. You've misplaced the original at some point, like the cradle you think you bought or the ring you used to wear or the color from your scalp. You don't know the answer anyway, and you tell her this and she flicks her wand and you shriek until her smile grows so big she disappears behind it and you fall into the ceiling, which is a little like a rabbit's den, but only a little because it isn't the right shade of earth at all and it's not the sort of wonderland you can extricate yourself from.


	2. had we but world enough, and time

**a / n; **written (somewhat lately) for challenge three of the forum-wide competition over at the HPFC forum. I am representing **slytherin house** and using **prompt table two: **_feeling dizzy, orange, are you sure?, flickering, it's expected_, something is wrong, and candle. The italicized prompts are the ones I've used in this story. I had so much fun writing this, and I'll admit it was largely inspired by the movie Inception and the book The Five People You Meet in Heaven, though there are numerous other inspirations. The title is taken from Andrew Marvell's poem _To His Coy Mistress. _

**et al  
**_had we but world enough, and time_

: - :

There is a time – minutes and years and no time at all, simultaneously – when he does not exist, and it's a curious non-existence because it's after his conception and before his rebirth, and he's dimly aware of the whole affair in a cellular sort of sense – the falling, the stillness, the dizzying circles and silence and reverberating whispers that speak stagnation to his molecules.

It is a curious non-existence and he is just enough aware of it to realize that when it is over he is dead or a ghost or something less, and he is entirely unsurprised, when he opens his eyes to grey wheat fields and orange skies and the reckless tilt of this world's horizon, to find himself twenty-one again – the age just before everything went horribly awry and he became something other than himself.

Here, he is Sirius Black. Here, he still smells of leather and butterbeer and ignorant immortality. Here, he is exactly himself and a memory of himself, and being dead is exactly the same as being alive but with more remembering and an atmosphere like dust and stagnant air.

And he doesn't know, but he thinks, that if this is the afterlife it isn't singular, and it is his and simultaneously someone else's and he wonders whose it is _('James', he hopes)_ and how long it will be until he teases them out of the fabric of this place.

And because he is twenty-one again and the sort of reckless and impatient that modified motorbikes and chased girls and courted death, he begins to walk.

: - :

He is startled and unsurprised at how this world changes – how the wheat field, on a whim, is cut through by a swath of asphalt; how the asphalt is replaced by a city square; how the square becomes London; how London becomes a foyer; and how the foyer becomes some tantalizing bit of memory.

_It's all about the intent_, he thinks, and then, _but not here_.

Because if this is someone else's afterlife he would never have thought or hoped or wanted it to be _hers_.

Yet there she is, sitting quite still in the adjacent room, hands folded, hair dark against her pallid cheekbones, studying the wall _(and it's so expected, he thinks, and, of course, he should have known),_ occasionally whispering to herself, _"Lycoris. Regulus. Arcturus. Lucretia. Orion. Cygnus. Pollux_. – Sirius."

And it is the last that she shouts, and it is the last that is punctuated with the smell of burning threadwork.

There is nothing for him here, so he turns on his heel and slips through the door of his childhood. 

: - :

12 Grimmauld Place dissolves behind him or maybe it was never there to begin with, though he doesn't bother to ponder the physics of the dead, just accepts it and moves on, though he supposes in this place he doesn't have to. He supposes he could bask in this moment of ostracism for eternity, and it's a strange thought, but it was never in his nature at any rate, so he continues onward.

London gives rise to verdant country and snatches of other places, and he can't know for sure, but he supposes that these are fragments of other afterlives or perhaps residual memories that the living have forgotten and so ,too, have died.

He hears opera music pouring from the trees, sees insubstantial children dashing down dirt paths, feels subway trains rattling absurdly beneath the surface.

And without him quite knowing how, he is standing beside a lake, and just on the periphery of his vision there is a boy or a young man skipping stones on the surface of the water.

And his heart speeds in his chest at the sight of the black hair and pale skin, and he thinks he knows who this must be, and he calls out "James!"

But it isn't. Of course it isn't.

The boy who turns to face him is eighteen and looks rather like himself, and for an instant he is confused, and then he remembers –"Regulus."

"Sirius," he nods, setting down the stones he had gathered and walking over to the older brother who had outlived him by fifteen years. And it's just a little bit unsettling, that Regulus is still so much the same, like no time had passed since he had last seen him. For him it hadn't, he supposed.

"I knew we'd cross paths eventually," Regulus's smile is a little bit hesitant and weary, and maybe even a little smug, too. And Sirius wishes he could say the same, but the thought of his brother being here had never even so much as occurred to him, and he feels that twinge of guilt he occasionally does when thinking about Regulus, when thinking about how lousy an older brother he must have been, how he could have maybe stopped everything from happening, "in this place, they always do."

"How long have you been here?" Sirius asks and he knows the answer, knows he's been here for the past decade and a half, but that's not quite the question he's asking.

"Since I opened my eyes," he says, and it's so typical Regulus it almost hurts, "it is a nice place, after all, and I would rather people come to me than the other way around," a wry smile, "though I don't suppose the same could be said of you."

"No, of course not," he stops and hesitates and goes for it anyway, "Reg, I- -"

"You were right about them, Sirius," he says, looking out at the lake, and back at his brother, and Sirius can't help but notice the way his shoulders tense watching the water. He wonders why his brother chose this place, "You were wrong about me."

This is an unexpected absolution, and the two of them spend untold moments in it, revelling in the way death has wiped clean a slate that life never could. They talk for hours or days or years – about life, about death, about who they've found and who they haven't, who they're still waiting for. They talk about school and Regulus's treachery and Sirius's imprisonment. They talk until there's only silence and then Regulus quirks an eyebrow and asks, "So, are you leaving then?"

"No, Reg, of course not," but the words are half said and he already knows they're false. He hasn't finished looking – for James, mostly – and he tells him this apologetically and Regulus only smiles.

"Well, we've got eternity, haven't we? And like I said, our paths are bound to cross eventually, they always do."

"Are you sure?"

Regulus nods and waves him on, haughtily.

Sirius smiles then and brushes his cheeks clean, and all at once he's somewhere else entirely.

: - :

He appears, once again, in London – but this is a different London, fonder than his mother's and filled with more memories. It is raining lightly in this London, making the world smell of earth and water and damp newspaper, and everywhere people are bundled beneath coats and umbrellas and conveniently placed awnings.

It takes him a minute to gather enough sense to recognize where he is, but when he does, he catches his breath.

King's Cross Station, dreary as he remembers from his last train ride, but impossibly vibrant because of it.

And because it's his intent, he finds himself suddenly sprawled across Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and there is laughter in his ears that isn't his own, but as familiar as if it was.

"Feeling rather clumsy today, Mr Padfoot?"

And there is a hand pulling him up and he doesn't even have to ask whom it belongs to.

"James," he breathes, looking into the face of an eleven-year-old boy who is, at the same time, seventeen and twenty-one and the kid he met for the first time on this very platform and his best mate and a father and a long dead hero. And he's flickering between each one and is all of them simultaneously, and looking into his eyes Sirius is overwhelmed by guilt and and brotherly affection and boisterousness and a feeling that is inexplicably like being home.

* * *

_please don't favorite without reviewing. :)_


	3. til human voices wake us, and we drown

**a / n; **written for challenge four of the forum-wide competition over at the HPFC forum, repping **slytherin house**. I was given **remus lupin (gryffindor) **and I chose to pair him with **charity burbage (hufflepuff)**. I guess I should say that her house is entirely speculation on my part. As for the story itself, I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this, **however**, this is by no means all that I've written on the two- - the original piece is several thousand words longer and contains much of the background information for their "relationship". It is so much longer, though, that I wasn't able to entirely hash out everything that I needed to within the deadline and be able to fit in the word limit. So, if they don't seem _quite_ believable in this, that's why. I'll probably post the full piece later. Oh, and the title is stolen from T. S. Eliot's poem _The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock_.

**et al  
**_til human voices wake us, and we drown_

: - :

His _condition _is no small secret among the staff, and for the most part, they are quite accommodating, Severus especially, though a small part of him is still a little hesitant to acknowledge this. Yes, they are quite accommodating, and it is almost enough and almost more than he deserves, but he can't help but notice the way their shoulders tense around him, the way their words become stiff and their eyes shift nervously.

_She_, however, is the exception, and it is so very _Hufflepuff _of her, and so very endearing, and not for the first time the defense teacher wonders at what kind of woman she is. _Beautiful_, he thinks, _perfect—_the sort of woman who brings him coffee those mornings beforehand, when the bags beneath his eyes are the deepest and he has almost lost himself entirely; the sort of woman who is undeterred by his occasional shortness, who is _entirely_ unafraid of his lycanthropy, who is curious of it, even.

"What's it like," she asks one Sunday afterwards _(and it's a little dismal, he thinks, the way everything is divided into before and after—and during, of course, but he doesn't like to think of that)_, "being a werewolf?"

And he very much wants to tell her the truth, wants her to understand. He wants to say it's like dying to yourself and waking up again, only you can't ever be sure that you're really awake because you feel more weighed down and corpse-like than before. He wants to tell her it's agony—feeling your bones break and shift and rearrange, feeling hair pierce through your skin like a million needles. He would like to say it's horrible—the sharpness of your senses, the way you feel when you're being wrestled from your own mind by something completely _other_, the way you sometimes _enjoy it_: the metallic taste of blood, the power, the freedom. He wants to explain how it's always with you, like a shadow in your subconscious singing anarchy to your nervous system. He wants to tell her how you feel all the other days—like bits of yourself are missing, like you're some sort of ticking time bomb. He wants to tell her about the delineation of days and how none of it matters, anyway.

"It's like going to sleep," he says, thinly, "like dreaming, only you can't quite remember what the dream was about, but you're certain you've dreamed something."

* * *

_please don't favorite without reviewing. :)_


	4. these, our bodies, possessed by light

**a / n;** written for challenge five of the HPFC forum-wide competition. I am representing **slytherin house** and my characters for this challenge are **penelope clearwater (ravenclaw)** and **percy weasley (gryffindor)** both of which fulfill the requirement for this particular challenge, as I previously chose to write about characters from slytherin and hufflepuff house. This was ridiculously fun to write, even though I totally procrastinated on this. I just adore writing about characters I've never written before. :) Also, I feel I should mention that the title is stolen from the same poem the prompt is stolen from, and therefore, doesn't belong to me.

* * *

**et al  
**_these, our bodies, possessed by light_

: - :

_tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us  
_—Richard Siken

: - :

There is a moment—and it is the sort that keeps you company on lonely nights when your tea has gone cold and his absence is most tangible—the two of you share the spring you turn twenty-one, just before Dumbledore's death and the downward spiral of your otherwise average life. And you suppose that is why it means so much to you, and that is why it stands out the most.

There is a moment and an afternoon in which Percy has managed to extricate himself from the Ministry, in which he holds your hand as you wander along the coast of your childhood home, chatting and laughing and picking out interesting objects dotting the sands—a seashell, a crab, a broken glass bottle breaking the light into a thousand tiny rainbows.

And all of a sudden, you stop and point to a house sitting alone along the shore, and he follows your finger with a frown.

"Do you see that balcony?" you ask, indicating the uppermost tier of the house.

"Yes, of course," he says, as if he doesn't quite follow, and it's so very _Percy_ it makes your heart skip.

"It's a widow's walk," you say, and then, "do you know why they call it that?" and he probably already knows the answer, but he only smiles and shrugs his shoulders, and you can't help but lean your head against him and smile "Mariners' wives used to pace those platforms, watching the horizon for their husbands' return. Sometimes, they never came back."

And he tells you how sad that is, how tragic, and how you shouldn't dwell on morbid thoughts like that, but you shake your head and tell him it's beautiful, love like that, and then because it seems right and because you believe it, you continue, "I'd wait for you, Percy. A lifetime if I had to."

: - :

And that is the last time you're really whole, and you try to hold on to it, because the next months are dark and grim and riddled with promises of bleaker times to come, especially for mudbloods like you and bloodtraitors like Percy, and the moments you have together now are the sort punctuated with long silences and tense shoulders.

And then there is a night in which the Ministry is overthrown and you are awoken with a bang and a gasp, and you reach for your wand and think, frantically, _so, this is it._

But you never thought it would come so soon.

Out of the darkness comes a voice, and you think it's quite possibly the last you'll ever hear.

"Penny."

And you very nearly cry, because it's _Percy_. Percy. And you're safe, if only for a night longer.

"You have to leave, Penny. _Now,_" he says, taking your wrist and pulling you from the bed.

"Wh—" but before you can reason or react, he turns on the sport, and with a _crack_ you are somewhere else entirely.

: - :

When you turn twenty-two, it is alone in a cramped apartment in Romania, and the rational, Ravenclaw part of you supposes you should be grateful that you've lived to see it, but the part of you that is entirely in love, and not just with Percy, but with your family and life and _freedom_, can only sob into a teacup and pray for Charlie to show up and tell you everyone is still alright—that _they_ haven't found your parents or your sister and that Percy is still safe.

But the night turns into morning, and all you can do is wait.

A lifetime, if you have to.

_(it's not as poetic as it used to be)_

: - :

"How are you coping?" and it's not quite the person you would like it to be, but it's a conversation, and if you squint your eyes just enough the red hair and freckles almost seem to match up, and at any rate, you can pretend, so you take it.

"Alright," you say, but the words are hollow and unconvincing, "It's colder here."

Charlie laughs, then, that rich laugh that his brother never had, and you want to tell him he's absolutely _wrecking_ your charade, but that seems impolite.

"You should see how it is _outside_." he grins, but you know he's half serious when he says it, and you find it difficult to return his smile.

"Look, Penelope, I know this is hard for you—"

"Have you spoken to Percy lately?" you ask abruptly, and Charlie gives you that sympathetic look that makes you want to cry from frustration and loneliness.

"A bit," he says, "But he's been really busy with work, Pen, he has to keep his head down."

"I know," you say, but it's not really enough.

: - :

"How's your Romanian?" he asks you, on one of the rare occasions he feels it's safe enough to chance a visit.

"Abysmal," you say twisting your hair around your finger smiling, and it would almost be like old times, except for the black cloud hanging ominously at the edges, "I don't even bother to go out most days. I just make Charlie run errands for me."

"It's probably for the best, anyway. The more you keep your head down the better," he says matter-of-factly, and it almost makes you want to hit him. You want him to tell you that you need sunshine and civilization and to come home with him that very instant. You want him to tell you he loves you, and _hang the war! _he'll have you. But he's far too practical, and you know you're expecting too much anyway.

For now you'll have to settle for his arms around your waist, because this moment is precious, and this moment is all you have to hang on to.

: - :

"Marry me," you tell him, the next time he's around, and his jaw drops and his voice cracks and you don't care in the least that you're being tactless or that you've put him on the spot.

"What—Pen—I—"

"I'm serious, Percy," you say, reaching for his hand across the table. "I love you, and I've waited for you, and when this war is over, I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

And he sighs and looks you in the eye.

"Alright," he breathes, and you can't help but grin.

_(his lips, you think, feel a lot like home)_

: - :

"Penelope," and you nearly jump out of your skin from fright, but it's only Charlie, and you can't help but breathe a sigh of relief, and you can't help but feel ever so slightly disappointed, too.

"Char—" but you catch the look on his face—all stark and serious—and you're terrified of what he'll say next, "what's happened? Is Percy—"

"It's You-Know-Who," he says, "at Hogwarts."

"Oh."

_(you never had the strength to walk those balconies anyway)_

: - :

The night is on fire and you're choking on smoke and screams, and stumbling over stones and rubble and bodies, and everywhere spells are flying, and all you can do is run and search and hope.

: - :

"Percy!" you scream, and it's him, it's really him—dirty and bloody but so gloriously alive, and it's more than you could have hoped for.

"Penny," and his shoulders are stiff and his face is drained of color and you think you see tears leaking from his eyes, but it's too dark to be sure, "What are you—you should have stayed in Romania."

But you shake your head and wrap your fingers around his.

"I love you," you say, and it's true and it always has been and you know it and he knows it, and this is the way it's going to be.

_(and, you think, if the mariners' wives really loved them, they would have followed them out to sea)_

* * *

**a / n 2;** initially, I wrote this with Penelope dying at the end, which, I think, fit the prompt more closely AND was more canon-compliant, but after I went back and edited, I just couldn't turn this into another angstfic. Sorry? But, I'd love to hear what you think about this, and

_please don't favorite without reviewing. :)_


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